Press Release from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife:

Deadline reminder to those who wish to apply for 2017 any-deer (antlerless) permit lottery!

Applications will be accepted online until 11:59 p.m. on August 15, 2017.

It is free to apply for the any-deer permit lottery. The drawing will be held on September 8, 2017 and results will be posted on the Department’s website.

Applicants are reminded that the Department does not mail the any-deer, bonus antlerless deer, or superpack antlerless deer permits/transportation tags. Instead, permit winners will need to record their permit number that can be found online after the drawing, and report the permit number to the registration station when tagging their deer.

Those interested are reminded that even though the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife doesn’t know how many “Any-Deer Permits” will be issued, the deadline for application is before midnight, August 15, 2017.

V. Paul Reynolds reminds readers that it appears wildlife management has become a great tool for politicians to appease their special interest “constituency” to ensure more votes. They have successfully allotted about 60% of the total number of doe permits (Any-Deer Permits) to their special interest buddies leaving only 40% for the general “random” drawing.

Reynolds wants to know where these proposed bills to give more special interest groups even more permits will end. He gives an example of how, if one bill passes, there will be no permits left. “If, for example, you guarantee old codgers like me (older than 70) a doe permit automatically, you have just issued 36,000 new doe permits! Yes, believe it or not, there are 36,000 Maine hunters 70 years or older.”

As I understand it, the proposed allotment of doe permits for this coming deer hunting season is around 66,000. If Reynolds’ figures are accurate, then 60% of those permits, are handed out to special interest groups and individuals, that would leave about 26,000 permits to be drawn in a random drawing. If this latest bill proposal passes that would automatically give a doe permit to all licensed hunters 70 years of age or older, some of those 70 year old hunters will not be given a permit because there aren’t enough to go around.

You can do most anything with numbers to make a point or to raise a lot of questions. If you add some smoke and mirrors, the sky is the limit in what you can do.

Maine deer managers are proposing to increase “Any-Deer Permits” (ADP) to over 66,000 – a tripling of the number of permits issued in 2011 (26,390). Has Maine’s deer population tripled statewide or within Wildlife Management Districts in six years?

State deer managers use the issuance of ADPs in specific Wildlife Management Districts (WMD) to control deer populations. Reports are stating that deer managers say they now need to reduce deer populations in some WMDs and therefore the need to increase ADPs. However, they also report that they are going to go ahead and issue some ADPs in WMDs that are in desperate need to grow the deer population simply to “provide hunting opportunity.”

Not that many years ago, Maine told people that the deer population exceeded 300,000 and the goal was to grow it even larger. During those banner years (if they even existed) ADPs issued amounted to around the mid -70,000. Now one report from a spokesperson with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) said the state has 240,000 deer. I doubt that, but we have few options than to use that as a baseline.

What doesn’t quite add up for me is even when taking into account the issuance of ADPs according to the needs of each WMD, how can the issuing of 66,000 ADPs for a population of 240,000 deer be reasonable when 70,000 permits were issued when it was guessed the deer population to be over 300,000? Something has changed.

By issuing permits in WMDs that have in the range of 4-6 deer per square mile, simply to “provide hunting opportunity,” seems irresponsible, especially when managers claim they are trying to figure out how to grow deer in these regions.

Another question that needs to be asked, it appears that the largest increases in ADPs come in regions where the human population is higher. The MDIFW has also said that it is important to reduce the number of deer in some Southern and Central regions to reduce the spread of tick-born diseases. Is this decision based on pressure from those claiming to have scientific evidence on this issue, or does MDIFW actually have scientific evidence to show the need to reduce deer numbers? We know that MDIFW, and most all wildlife management departments nationwide, manage wildlife mostly according to the demands of the public, while putting science on the far back burner. Is that what’s going on here and how much so?

It seems odd to me that MDIFW seems to be saying that too many deer causes the population to become unhealthy and may cause a public health concern. For that reason they are eager to cut down the deer population. However, when it comes to moose management, too many moose has resulted in a severe outbreak of winter ticks, which are in turn killing the moose population, and yet MDIFW wants to continue to grow the moose population. What’s going on anyway?

At a time when Maine is still in need of growing and stabilizing a deer herd, even preparing for the next round of “severe winters,” it may be necessary in a few WMDs to reduce deer numbers (a feat difficult to achieve because there is limited land access to hunt), but seems utterly irresponsible to issue any ADPs in WMDs that have no deer to begin with.

One has to wonder if this effort to appease hunters isn’t more about finding ways to cover up the decade long dismal deer harvest.

This Wednesday the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) will, once again, do random draws for a limited number of “Any-Deer” permits. This permit allows a deer hunter to harvest any age and sex of deer. Otherwise, all harvests of deer are limited to bucks only and antler restrictions.

Because of lousy deer numbers in certain areas of the state (the blame is always bad winters), MDIFW will only issue 28,770 permits, compared to 37,185 last year – 46,710 were issued in 2013. At this rate, MDIFW will eliminate the permit within a few more years.

While most are explaining away why the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) reduced the number of “Any-Deer- Permits, perhaps unknowingly, the Portland Press Herald reveals to readers a couple of terrible mismanagement events of the state’s whitetail deer herd. The first admission was:

Ravana said the last time Maine saw two similar back-to-back winters was in 2008 and 2009, when there was widespread mortality among the whitetail herd. He said the department reacted too slowly at the time, increasing any-deer permits by 3,000 in 2010 and then slashing them by 46 percent the following year in an emergency measure to help the decimated herd.

Of course we are not told the reason “the department reacted too slowly.” Was it greed for those tax dollars the department gets for selling permits? Or was it just a matter of terrible deer management? Or a combination of both?

The second issue is:

…yearly estimates [of deer population] were not available from 2004 to 2013.

How do you properly management a deer herd without calculating approximate deer populations? These are just more explanations and substantiations that one of the reasons the Maine deer herd is suffering is due to a poor deer management system – maybe the management system is fine, but the application of it stinks. Maybe the department just stroked that golden goose once too often.

I have no issue with MDIFW reducing deer permits in those regions that need it. What’s at issue is whether or not it should have come to a point where harsh measures are necessary to manipulate the deer herd. Severe winters do play a role in deer management but managers can’t keep blaming harsh winters. Maine has always had harsh winters but Maine has not always had a struggling deer herd.

Wildlife officials say they want to be conservative in managing the state’s whitetail deer herd, after two harsh winters.